I was making a layout as part of my Trip to Michigan album and I had these pictures of our stop in Frankenmuth. It is a town rich in its German heritage and also known as “Little Bavaria.” Many of the buildings have the beautiful Bavarian gingerbread detail on the trim.

So naturally I wanted to highlight the detail that I fell in love with. But I had no luck finding stickers and embellishments in my stash to do the job. No problem – I’ll just make it, I thought.  I chose a background paper that coordinated with the rest of the album and then I knew I wanted to use blue as my accent color. Next, I studied the pictures to get an idea of what I could make with the supplies and tools I had and I came up with something that turned out very cute in my opinion.

I cut two strips that measured 2 inches high and 11.5 inches long. I attached the strips together (using photo mount squares lined with wax paper on the back so that they are butted up against one another and NOT overlapping) to make one long strip that would span my two-page layout. Then I used my 1-inch circle punch to punch out overlapping circles creating figure 8 holes in the strip. I set the punch in about ¼ inch on both the top and bottom to achieve the overlap and the circles were centered vertically.  Then I left about a ¾-inch space between the punched out areas.

Once I worked my way across the strip, then I got a 1/8-inch hole punch and punched 3 holes centered vertically and evenly spaced on the space between each figure 8 hole. After attaching to my page, I used a white, broad point journaling pen to draw on the “painted” detail on the gingerbread “spindles.” They are simply lines that outline either side of each of the figure 8 holes. I had to go over the drawn line about 5 or 6 times to get the line white enough to show and still look painted.

Next I cut four strips of the same paper that measured ¼-inch high by 11.5 inches long to act as the “railings” at the top and bottom of the punched “spindles” of my fence-like gingerbread detail.  I rounded the corners on the bottom edges of the upper pieces to make it look more like a handrail and attached all these “railing” pieces to my page.

I simply love the outcome and it really was very easy to achieve. I feel like it makes a real statement and draws attention to the gingerbread detail in my pictures too. I ended up placing a white journaling block directly atop my “railing” and it was such a stark contrast that I felt it needed something there where the white paper met the dark blue. So I took a cue from my pictures and placed some flower stickers there as if they were planted in a window box right on my railing – too cute.

Make a gingerbread detail of your own if you have pictures of places with this type of architecture OR even if you have gingerbread houses at Christmastime. This is an easy and inexpensive large embellishment that uses only basic tools and a little imagination to create.

Tagged with: architecture | gingerbread

Categorized as: Cost-efficiency | Embellishments | Punches | Simple